Dr. Nicolosi: What I'd like to do is go over four myths that people have slowly begun to believe, which are certainly not true, but that we have to look at. If we believe these four myths then we will believe that homosexuality is totally acceptable by our society. Homosexuality is not a sexual problem, it is an identity problem. And that's the foundation for the understanding of the homosexual condition. Homosexuality is not a problem about sex. It's not about sexual behavior. It's about identity, specifically gender identity. And we'll go into that a little more.

The four gay myths: -- that ten percent of the population is gay. Absolutely not true. It's a fallacy that has been repeated so many times -- you know they say if you repeat a lie many times people just begin to believe it. In fact, it's really 2.5 % of the population. And people ask the question, how is it possible that 2.5% of the population should have such an incredible influence on the rest of society? That's a very good question.

People are born gay -- there might be something predisposed -- there's a gay gene, perhaps. A number of studies have come out that have claimed that. None of those studies really hold up. The media jumps on these studies and then when the other scientists look at these studies in more detail, we see that they're full of flaws. But in the mean time, people think that they've just discovered some sort of gay gene or something.

Number three: once gay always gay. That's part of the gay agenda to have us believe that. That's absolutely not true. And this is why gay activists are very much opposed to the work I'm doing -- because basically I work with people who come in as homosexual and are able to make a significant change in their life. I do not pretend to claim that they come in homosexual and walk out heterosexual. It's a long term process. In certain cases it might be a lifetime process. But I can tell you that in a significant way many of the men I work with do change.

Number four: that the homosexual is normal in every way except for his sexual preference. That's a euphemism, sexual preference. As we begin to understand the cause of homosexuality, the nature of homosexuality, we are going to see that homosexuality is not just about sexual choice, or sexual preference, but it's a whole psychology, beginning and always staying with the idea that the homosexual suffers from a gender identity.

The most important distinction I make in the very beginning, and I think this is so important for us to be able to counter the gay strategy that is being promoted in our society and is being promoted in our church, the most important distinction I make is the distinction between gay and homosexual. Gay versus homosexual. Now most people think that gay and homosexual are synonymous. In fact gay activists would have us believe that gay and homosexual are interchangeable terms, and that's certainly not true. It's very important for us to be aware of the distinction. Homosexual is a description of a psychological condition, a sexual orientation. Gay is a social-political identity. It's very important. And there are many homosexuals who do not choose this social-political identity called gay. But gay activists would have us believe that they are speaking for all homosexuals. But there's this population of homosexuals saying you're not speaking for us. Gay is only one way of dealing with one's homosexuality. My clients are what I call non-gay homosexuals. They reject the label of gay, but they acknowledge the fact that they are struggling with homosexuality. The basic difference between homosexual and gay is whether or not the person identifies with his attractions: if he sees it as a problem or if he sees it as not a problem. The gay sees it as not a problem. Gay has not only seeped into the vocabulary of our popular culture, it has unfortunately seeped into the Catholic Church, and we are hearing terms like gay people or gay Catholics. And I don't know if anybody will be around Saturday morning; I'm giving a presentation Saturday morning on gay strategies within the Catholic Church, and one of the important strategies is the idea that there are some people that are gay -- not true. Homosexuality is a gender identity disorder.

What I'd like to do now is just briefly review for you the development of the homosexual condition. And we are going to be focusing on male homosexuals and in many ways this corresponds to the lesbian developmental pattern but it's a slightly different case, so we are not going to deal with it so much. We are just going to stick with the male homosexual. To begin, all children are first identified with the mother. Boys and girls alike are identified with the mother. However as they get a little older, they begin to realize around two and a half, three years old, what they call the gender identity phase, they begin to realize that the world is divided between male and female, and that they have to make a decision one way or another. Now girls maintain their primary identity with the mother, but boys have the additional developmental task of dis-identifying with the mother and attaching with the father, bonding with the father. And this might explain why there is more male homosexuality than lesbianism, because it's difficult for the boy to make that transition. He needs the help of his parents, he needs the help of a culture that respects and appreciates masculinity. Now if the mother is smothering and possessive and undermining his efforts, or if the father especially is cold, distant, detached, emotionally unavailable, or harsh or severe, the boy will make that transition by dis-identifying with the mother and trying to connect with the father. If the father is cold or distant the boy will experience a hurt. He will experience a rejection, and he will return back to the mother. And he will develop what we call, which is a very important concept in the healing of homosexuality, we call defensive detachment. Defensive detachment is a child's way of protecting himself against future hurt.

I'll give you an example of defensive detachment. A couple of years ago my son, he was just about this age, maybe three or four. My wife and I went on a little vacation, and of course we were anxious. We only had one son. We were anxious, left the son with the baby-sitter, and we were coming home, and we were kind of anxious, you know, and we walked in the house with some little toys or something. He looked at us and just turned away and walked away from us. It's like -- what is this, you know. That was basically defensive detachment. It's a child's way of protecting himself against disappointment or hurt. Now a parent who might be narcissistic or a parent who might be immature would have an attitude of well OK, if you want to reject me I'll reject you too. But a healthy parent would reach out and turn that around.

And I'm working right now with some seven year old boys who are very effeminate, and the boys are rejecting the fathers, and we have to get the fathers to make that connection with the boy. So when you look at this phase, we have the androgynous phase. The androgynous phase is when the child doesn't notice the difference between male and female, and when we begin to notice the world is divided between male and female, he has what we know as the androgynous fantasy -- the fantasy that he could be both boy and girl. He doesn't have to make a decision. But at this time language is imposing upon him, and language makes a distinction between gender: he and she, and hers and his; and the child is forced to make a distinction one way or another. And so he has to go out and develop again this connection with the father, and it is a challenge. And most so called primitive societies realize how important it is for the boy to develop this masculine identification, and that's why there are so many rights of passage for the boy and rituals for masculinity. And we've lost that in our society. He will reach out. His natural male strivings are to fulfill his masculine identity. He wants to be a boy. He's born to be a boy, and he wants to make that connection with a male in his environment who will teach him how to be a male. Now if he tries a number of times and gets frustrated for different reasons, if the father does not respond for some reason, the boy what we call surrenders the protest. He gives up, and he takes the attitude of never again, forget about it. I reject you, you reject me. I reject you, and I reject what you represent, namely masculinity; I'm going back to mother where it's safe and where it's secure.

We'll look for a moment at father salience, the important factors of the father in the development of the heterosexual boy -- we call the father salience. And father salience has two ingredients, benevolence and strength. The boy needs to see the father as someone strong and someone good, not someone benevolent but weak, or strong but hostile or malevolent. And the boy will be attracted to this. The classic triadic relationship which has been seen time and time again in the histories of the male homosexual is the distant, detached father, the over-possessive, over involved mother. I see this time and time again. And Irving Beaver in the 1960's did a study of over 1,000 male homosexuals and repeatedly he saw this pattern. Of the two variables between mother and father, the critical factor seems to be the father, because even if the mother is over involved, the father can create that separation, can show the boy how to relate to a female.

When we look at the mother's role, we see how she reinforces the boy's masculinity. Does she appreciate masculinity? Does she convey to the boy that masculinity is something valuable, something to achieve? Her role as a wife to her husband -- how does she relate to her husband as a wife? How does she relate as a mother to her son? Does she see the boy as a male figure? Does she see him specifically as male, or just a child? One of the things I hear over and over with the clients I work with is that they feel like children, they feel like little kids. They will say, I never felt like I was treated like a boy, I was treated like a child. It's gender-less.

The physical nature of the father-son relationship -- we look at the way many studies, psychoanalytic studies, observe the way parents parent -- and mothers parent differently than the way fathers parent. There are two different kinds of styles. Studies showing mothers -- video camera studies where they analyze behavior will show that a mother will just care for the son. The father will play with the boy. He becomes a playmate. The only way that the father knows how to baby-sit is to play, or to totally ignore, right? And people know this, mothers know. Of course you have to have scientists to do a study to prove it, but we all know this. And the physical dimension of the father-son relationship is so important, the physical contact. You think of the situation of the boy, the little infant toddler being thrown and tossed up in the air. The father's throwing him up in the air and the kid is kind of like scared, but he should be laughing because the father is laughing, and he thinks this is fun, but he is not so sure. A very interesting lesson that's happening there is that the father teaches the boy that what is scary is fun. And this is a particular characteristic of masculinity; what is scary is fun. And by the father's laughing at the boy being tossed in the air, the kid gets the message - this should be fun. And the mother is watching this and she's getting a heart attack because she doesn't understand this entire pattern of the masculine bonding. But this is why the homosexual who did not have that connection with the father always wants that physical contact. And it becomes the foundation of erotic attraction and erotic behavior.

Father as mystery -- this is a repeated theme I have seen in all the men that I work with. They know their mothers like a book. They can read their mothers like a book. They can predict her. If they want to get something from their mother they know exactly how to work her, but the father is a mystery. They just don't know what makes him tick. They feel very ill at ease talking to their fathers. When father and pre-homosexual son are together there's a stiltedness, there's a discomfort with each other. And the mother is the typical intermediary. The mother will tell the father what the boy really wants to say. The mother will tell the boy what the father wants to say, and if the mother is removed from the situation, the father and son alone feel very awkward with each other. So already you're seeing that alienation from masculinity, alienation from his own masculinity and the alienation with his father, father figure, too.

As we go into the latency period, the latency phase is about five years old to twelve years old. We see poor peer relationships. Many studies show that the pre-homosexual boy has poor peer relationships. He doesn't know how to mix with the other boys. And I talk about the kitchen window boy, the boy who is looking out the kitchen window and he is admiring and envying the other boys who are in rough and tumble play, baseball or football, and he wants to connect with them. He wants to be a part of that, but he doesn't know how to make that connection. He doesn't trust his own male body. He doesn't know how to do that. He's alienated. He's in the kitchen with his mother and his grandmother and it's very interesting that when a homosexual comes out of the closet, he typically tells his sister or his mother. The father or the older brother is the last to know. There is always that discomfort with males.

Cross-gender behavior -- Richard Green from UCLA did a great deal of studies on the pre-homosexual boy, and other researchers, Zeuger also. And there's like a 75% correlation between childhood effeminacy and future homosexuality. So this is predictable. And it's amazing how parents don't know how to deal with these situations when they come up. I can tell you about a seven year old boy that I'm working with right now. And it's a typical situation: the father is very quiet, non-expressive; mother is very over involved. And this boy had a fantastic Barbie doll collection. He had like nine dolls. And his mother was saying there's something wrong with this; I just don't know, but there's something wrong with this. And she goes to the teacher and says, but is this normal? Of course it's normal. He's getting in touch with his androgynous nature. OK. And then he's getting into dressing up and feminine behavior, and the mother says, I don't know, this isn't right. She goes to the counselor -- don't worry he's getting in touch with his androgynous nature; you don't want him to get into the stereotypic male model. Of course not. No, of course not. OK, finally this mother says there's something wrong. She comes to me and I say look, if we do nothing this boy will become homosexual. If we make some decisive interventions we can turn this boy around. And we have been working with the father to get involved. We've been working with the mother to get less involved, get the older brother involved, and it's really, really quite remarkable the kinds of changes we can produce with these young kids. I was talking to a colleague a couple of months ago, and she runs a clinic in Chicago and I said to her how do you deal with these pre-homosexual boys, these cross gender behavior? And she said, very PC, very politically correct psychologist, she said we work with the parents to help them grieve the process that their sons will not be heterosexual. We help them grieve the possibility that they'll never get married and there will never be grandchildren. This is where the American Psychological Association is at. I said to her, we're not ready to grieve yet. I mean right now we're doing a lot of work, and it's really amazing to see the changes in these boys.

The false self -- this is a characteristic, what I call the good little boy. The good little boy, the pre-homosexual boy, is not rough and tumble. He's very clean, he's very neat. He goes to school in the morning with a white shirt; he comes back at three o'clock perfectly clean. Parts the hair, never gets disturbed. And these are the kinds of boys; they're out of touch with the body. Many studies show that pre-homosexual boys are into theater and acting. And there are a number of studies that show this. Why? Because it's part of the false self. They can't express themselves emotionally, directly, so they express it indirectly through theater and through acting. A number of my clients are aspiring actors.

The physical nature of heterosexual development -- the boy again has to be in touch with his body. The male homosexual does not own his male body. He doesn't believe it. All my clients have an inferiority about their bodies. They think they're too fat, or they think they're too skinny, or they're too pale or they're too dark; too hairy, not hairy enough. They're dissatisfied with their body, yet objectively -- if you see some of these gay men, I mean they go to the gym eight times a day, and they're obsessed, but it's still an image. The body is an object, it's not a subject. I have a man in therapy who gets a complete body waxing because of the hair. They put on the hot wax and tear off the hair, every six weeks -- as an example. And so we see in the pre-homosexual boy excessive modesty. He's afraid to take his shirt off. He's afraid to show his body, and when he gets older in adulthood, he goes the opposite and he reacts against the excessive modesty with exhibitionism. And in the gay world we see a lot of exhibitionism.

As we go into adolescence from 12 years old on, we get into what we call the erotic transitional phase. Basically what's going on is that the psychological groundwork, the emotional groundwork, the alienation from masculinity, the over-saturation with femininity, is the emotional foundation. So when sexuality comes in around 12 - 13 years old, guess where that sexual energy is going to go. It's not going to go toward the familiar, it's going to the mysterious. It's going to go to what he is not, not to what he is. The nature of human sexuality is that we are attracted to opposites. We do not eroticize traits that we possess. We eroticise traits that we do not possess. For the homosexual, men are mysteries. For the heterosexual, women are mysteries.

Homosexual behavior as a reparative drive -- and that's why the therapy is called reparative therapy. Gays get very angry when I say reparative therapy. You're repairing us like a car or a transmission? It's not repairing the homosexual. It's the understanding that homosexual behavior is a reparative drive. It's an unconscious attempt to heal the part of the self that is deficit. I'll give you an example: there's a woman in therapy with me right now, middle class woman arrested for stealing little objects -- shoplifting plastic little spoons that came to about six dollars; she got arrested. Very embarrassing -- go to court, get a lawyer, scandal, terrible; she can't explain why she has this compulsion to steal these little objects. Talking about it and going into her childhood, we see this is a woman who was very much as a little girl, very much deprived. All the other kids in the neighborhood got these little things, these little rewards and she was very much deprived, and it's kind of like an unconscious attempt to settle the score, to fill in the little gaps -- to express something that is needed -- totally unconscious. And this is the reparative drive of the homosexual. The homosexual wants to make that male contact because he is feeling deficit in his own masculinity. Whenever I say to one of my clients, what are the qualities of another guy that you find attractive? I say, give me personality traits. I'm attracted to the guy who is outgoing, confident, he knows what he wants, he is bold, he is courageous. What are the qualities that you would like to develop in yourself? I wish I was bold, I wish I was courageous, I wish I was outgoing; in other words, he cannot find it within himself, so it gets projected idealistically in an ideal form out there, and it becomes eroticized.

Associated features of homosexuality -- and many studies show this male gender deficit, as we've said, many even objective studies show -- object means paper and pencil studies -- show that male homosexuals have a weak sense of their own masculinity. There's a sense of inferiority.

Problems with assertion -- they have difficulty being assertive, especially to other men; especially to other men in power positions, authority. This is why male homosexuals have difficulty with men in power. This is why gay men in the church have a hostility toward male authority figures in the church, and that's where we see the alliance with the feminists, because what does a feminist have in common with the male homosexual? They both do not trust male power. They've been victimized. They make great allies, except they don't get along with each other during time-off.

And the tendency to sexualize aggression -- in other words, many of my men will act out sexually, homosexually. And what's behind the impulse to act out sexually is an anger: my landlord didn't come and fix the thing; or my boss wants me to stay overtime; or the people upstairs make noise and I don't know how to tell them to cut it out. And they act out sexually instead of doing it directly, so it's the sexualization of aggression.

Detachment from men is a characteristic of the male homosexual and when I say this a lot of gay men get very angry. What do you mean we're alienated from men? What do you mean we're detached? You see gay men would like us to believe, they would like to believe themselves, that they have a special connection with men. In fact, they have an alienation from men. Gay men feel uncomfortable around other men. That's why they eroticise them, because you're not going to eroticise what you're familiar with, you're going to eroticise what is beyond your reach. And that's what we call same sex ambivalence, and this is the paradox, this is the problem of living a homosexual lifestyle, what I call same sex ambivalence. On one hand they're afraid of men, on the other hand they sexualize them, you see, so you have a fear yet an erotic attraction. And this is why anonymous sexual contact is so attractive, because anonymous sexual contact, which is very high in the gay world, accomplishes contact -- they believe it's intimacy, it's a pseudo-intimacy, it's a counterfeit intimacy, while avoiding connection with the other person. So there's a sexual contact without having to really know each other as two individuals, as two men.

Failure of the male couple -- when you do the research, one of the promotions of the gay agenda is to have conventional heterosexual society believe that male couples are capable of long term monogamous relationships just like men and women, just like heterosexual married couples. However if you look closely at the literature, many studies show that the male homosexual couple have difficulty maintaining sexual fidelity or monogamy. A classic study done by two gay researchers, Mattison and McWhirter -- now Mattison and McWhirter themselves were gay. One was a gay psychologist and one was a gay psychiatrist; and they were in relationship with each other for twelve years. And they decided to do a study that would disprove the reputation that gay men are promiscuous. They were going to go out there and find long term monogamous relationships. And they do a great deal of searching to find these couples, because you can't find them in the gay bars, you can't find them in the gay baths; you have to find them, you know, tucked away in the little communities, living in a little house someplace. After a great deal of research, they were able to come up with 165 "long term relationships". Guess how many out of 165 couples were able to maintain sexual fidelity more than five years? Zero. They could not find one, of the very best, find one couple that was able to maintain sexual fidelity for more than five years. So gays are ready to point to heterosexual relationships and talk about the infidelity, but the infidelity is no comparison. And we're not just talking about an occasional cheating on the partner. We're talking about regular on going outside sexual relationships in which it is implicitly or explicitly understood that this is what they are going to do. What's interesting further is that a good 75% of these people, when they went into those relationships, went into it with the hope of finding sexual fidelity, finding monogamy. They wanted to beat the odds. They knew the reputation but they thought that they would be able to accomplish it. And eventually after five years they gave up on it also. And I can tell you whenever I see a young 16, 17, 18 year old guy coming in to me who is quite determined to live a gay lifestyle, he'll say to me all I want to do is find one guy and have a long term relationship with him. But if you speak with the same person when they are in their 30's and 40's they've totally given up on it, and it's just going for the sexual, because that's all there is. And again, many studies show this.

So again, the failure of the male couple -- how do we interpret this? First the gay apologists will say well it's not true, that promiscuity is as high in the homosexual world as it is in the heterosexual world. But then when you give them a lot of data to show that there is much more promiscuity with gay men, they say that's because our society, our homophobic society, does not support gay relationships; and if only we would support gay relationships, and reinforce and encourage, then they might be longer. You see it's always put back on the hetero/phobic society. But a very good answer to that was given by another gay writer. And the gay writer said if you look at other cultures, other minorities that lived in a hostile environment for example lets say the Jews in Germany for example or other minorities in a hostile environment. The hostile environment causes them to be more faithful to each other, to depend more on each other, not to divide each other, you see.

Basically in treatment, again it's not simply a question of people coming in as homosexual and leaving heterosexual. It's a long term process but these are people, these non-gay homosexuals that we never hear about in the media, are committed to this long term process and it's a process that is gratifying and satisfying to them. I make a distinction in this treatment between initiation versus unfolding. There are two basic types of psychotherapies, a masculine type of psychotherapy and a feminine type of psychotherapy. The masculine or the initiatory type of psychotherapy works well with the male homosexuals, which is -- look you're coming in, you're at point A, you and I together are going to get you to point B. The therapist has to be active, the therapist has to be involved and engaging. And he has to talk a lot, like I do, and keep it going. Unfolding therapy is more feminine therapy, it's the more classical. Unfolding is like we are peeling away the layers. In psychoanalysis the guy is lying on the couch for five years and the therapist is saying, uh-huh, tell me more; with the idea that as we peel away, we'll get down to this core reason of why he's homosexual. And that doesn't work. And that's perhaps why there has been a historical low treatment rate with classical psychoanalysis. What's very interesting is that a lot of male homosexuals become very frustrated with these therapists who just sit there and go, uh-huh, uh-huh. Why? Because the therapist reminds them of their fathers, and they think the guy is not interested in me, so they drop out. So they need someone the opposite. Someone -- I'm here for you, I'm going to work with you, here's something to work on. And this is exactly what they want.

Gender empowerment -- it's interesting to see how the healing of homosexuality is about the beginning of their identification of their masculinity, to begin to appreciate the difference between male and female and to appreciate and to identify within themselves the masculinity that's there. We're not transforming people. We're not turning people from homosexual to heterosexual. And again, the whole idea -- the fallacy of gay, we're not making people heterosexual; we are bringing out the heterosexuality that is there. We are all heterosexual. There's no such thing as a homosexual, as a description. It's like saying he is an alcoholic, his normal state is intoxication. There's no equivalent. So we are bringing out the latent heterosexuality which should have been done in childhood.

Self acceptance -- a lot of critics of reparative therapy think that we lay guilt trips, we make them feel worse about themselves. I've read quite a few criticisms by gay psychologists and psychiatrists who say that reparative therapy drives these poor people to suicide. Not true at all. They have to begin by accepting their homosexuality, not running away from it but facing it and going forward in it. Again the identification of internal masculinity, to be able to identify it within themselves and to see that as a common character that unites them and connects them with other men. And once they find that common masculinity the eroticism is just inappropriate. It doesn't fit, there's no place for it. What's interesting is that their androgynous speech begins to fall away. Remember we talked earlier about how the pre-homosexual boy has an androgynous fantasy. Gays and lesbians, those who are identified with their sexual orientation, maintain an androgynous fantasy that they're going to be both; they're a highly evolved version of heterosexuals. And when my clients come in they speak androgynously: "I was walking in the mall and I was attracted to a person." I said, was it a male or a female; so we have a basis, so we know how we are going to proceed. But as time goes on they begin to speak male, female -- appreciation for male-female difference, of course.

Making peace with the father is another dimension of reparative therapy, the healing of homosexuality. One of the interesting things that I have found is not only do male homosexuals have poor relationships with their fathers, but their fathers had poor relationships with their fathers. In other words my clients, not only do they not know anything about their fathers, but they know nothing about their grandfathers. Their fathers have little to say about their fathers. So we see this generational problem. It's a cultural problem -- understanding their father, getting to know their father, knowing the kind of father he had, which perhaps did not prepare him well enough to be a father to the client. Accepting the father's limitations and not always trying to get something from the father that the father's not capable of giving. And to learn how the father can express love. A lot of these fathers do not verbalize but they will demonstrate it in very subtle behavioral ways that my clients have to learn to pick up. Now a lot of these fathers, they'll change the motor oil in the car as a gesture of affection, which my guys don't even pay attention to, because most of my guys are into verbalization, which is a feminine way of communication.

Forgiveness of the father -- a very healing process. Look how Christian this is, it fits beautifully with the Christian framework. And finally for a number of my men who really advance, the stage of being a father to one's father -- where they actually father the father. They actually reach out and connect with him and break through the father's barrier -- emotional barrier, and speak to him. It's a very powerful process.

The value of same sex therapist -- one of the things that I believe in is that the male homosexual needs to work with a male therapist, and the lesbian client needs to work with a female therapist, as the opportunity to work through the same sex issues.

Transference and counter-transference -- I won't spend much time with that. That's basically the unconscious process that happens between the therapist and the client.

Challenges to verbalize -- it's very interesting, because the gay men have the reputation for always chattering, chattering like women. But if you listen, they really have difficulty effectively expressing their needs. Part of the development of the homosexual boy was -- somehow he missed the lesson of how to effectively express his needs and his wants, so a lot of the verbalization is complaining. It's a passive, it's a helpless complaining rather than effective verbalization.

The false self -- there's a false quality to the homosexual, to the gay man. There's something artificial about him. Even if you look at a gay demonstration there is something theatrical about it. There's something carnival-like about it. Two kinds of what I call personas, or two kinds of false identities: the passive compliant and the theatrical entertainer. And these are things that my men have to begin to identify and break through that and hit the core masculinity.

Again making male friendships -- very important part of the therapy, developing close male friendships. A lot of my men do not have close male friends, especially straight friends. And the healing is developing connection with guys who are heterosexual and feeling connected to them and feeling like one of them. What we call the transition from Eros to fila, from erotic object to another human being; to see him as another person. And a lot of homosexual behavior is object to object -- using themselves as objects.

Making male friendships, competition, being willing to compete with other men. Vulnerability -- being emotionally open and vulnerable, breaking through the false self, the passive compliant and theatrical entertainer, and being vulnerable and being open.

Non-sexual intimacy -- that's a contradiction in terms for a lot of these men, because for them intimacy means sexual contact. Non-sexual intimacy is making that connection man to man without it becoming eroticized. It's interesting, I do group on Monday night. A lot of my men are in group, and we have two men right now, two guys who are sexually attracted to each other, and they talk about it. They haven't done anything, they think about it but they're not doing anything about it. And they talk to each other on the phone all week but the only time they see each other is in group on Monday night. And there's a lot of flirtation, and a lot of giggling and a lot of innuendoes, but when we get serious, when I get them to be serious and to talk to each other from their feelings, there's something very sobering about it and you can tell when the cute little banter ends and they speak from their feeling. And the words are slower and they're more deliberate and they are looking at each other; and when they're in that place, the erotic element is completely gone. It's incompatible. Because they're getting the emotional feelings exchanged -- they're getting what they're looking for, and what they're looking for is an emotional connection.

Relationships with women -- a number of my men have gone on to marriage. A number of my men are now in long term relationships that they could have never imagined possible. Again working through the true self and being real, and being genuine with women, and not being the nice little boy. What they do is they re-enact with the woman what they did with their mother, which is to be the good little boy; and then unconsciously they resent her, they put a resentment onto her.

This is very interesting and this a beautiful thing that's happening -- there is a movement going on and as Catholics we tend not to hear about this stuff, but there's a whole what they call an ex-gay movement. I don't know if anybody has heard about Exodus International. Exodus International is a very large movement. And these are men who have lived in the gay life style and who have come out of it, and they tell their stories. They talk about their healing process. And psychologists like myself listen and we put the pieces together. And one of the interesting things that they say is that the homosexually oriented man -- I don't say homosexual man -- no such thing, the homosexually oriented man, if he's going to get close to a woman and get married, he's going to do it in a different track than the heterosexual man. The heterosexual man is first sexually attracted to a woman and then he gets to know her as a friend and as a person. The homosexually oriented man develops a friendship first, and then from the friendship he develops an affection and then that affection gets expressed sexually. And that's good news for a lot of women, I'll tell you, because it eliminates a lot of the games, you know. And it also is very helpful to the homosexually oriented man because he keeps waiting for that heterosexual attraction to kick in, but it doesn't work that way for him. And a lot of these men have said that they find their wives sexually attractive, but do not find other women sexually attractive. That's what they say. Very interesting. If anybody has seen the movie "The Shadowlands" -- did anybody see that? And I recommend it to my men because if you look closely that's exactly what happens. He develops a friendship and it develops, it's a deep friendship where they help each other. Then they develop an affection, and then the sexual is put on top. You remember that scene how nicely it was done. And that's how a lot of people do it and I think we need to recognize that.

Group therapy -- real quickly, it's information and support. These men are living in a counter culture. Surprisingly enough our culture is telling these people: don't try to change, you're born gay, that's how you are, give up the fight. And so these men need to be in supportive groups.

Mutuality -- keeping that sense of mutuality. I am a man like all these other men. They're not better than me, they're not weaker than me; they're not greater, they're not more inferior.

Defensive detachment -- that emotional detachment that first came in with the father, which exists with all men, is now worked through. It's dropped. The defensiveness is dropped.

Assertion -- again, effective verbalization. A lot of my men have trouble saying exactly what they want. Women tend to talk. When women are on the phone, they're on the phone for a half hour. The husbands says what did you talk about? Oh, nothing. But when men speak, men speak to convey information. For a man a good conversation is learning something. You know I got from here to there. Women speak not to exchange information, women speak to exchange emotional experience.

Anger -- the effective expression of anger, to express it and to receive it. A lot of my men, because their fathers were very hostile and angry, are very much afraid of male anger. They're afraid of their own anger, and they're afraid of another man's anger; and they need to realize it's not going to kill them.

Again I make a distinction between cure versus change. It's a long process, in certain cases it's a lifetime process. They develop insights. They begin to understand the meaning of homosexuality. I have in therapy with me a 71 year old client. He's my oldest, and he does telephone sessions with me every week from Puerto Rico. He was raised in Boston -- has a big house in Puerto Rico. And so we have a 7 year old boy and a 71 year old. And this man said to me, this is the first time I understand my homosexuality, I understand my hostility. This is a man who was raised with four sisters and five aunts all in one house. I mean the guy didn't have a chance. He described his father as an Irish Woody Allen. Now he understands why he's so angry at women and why he wants to push women away. He's been saturated.